Environment

NYT: China ‘Choking on Growth’

The New York Times presents “a series of articles and multimedia examining the human toll, global impact and political challenge of China’s epic pollution crisis.”

• As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes
  By Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley
  August 26, 2007

Summary: China is either unwilling or unable to make changes to improve the environment. As a result, public health is suffering, the economy is burning up, and citizens are getting anxious. While the government tries to impose some regulations, no one is really taking full responsibility for the country’s unprecedented pollution problem.

No country in history has emerged as a major industrial power without creating a legacy of environmental damage that can take decades and big dollops of public wealth to undo.

But just as the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic power have no clear parallel in history, so its pollution problem has shattered all precedents. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollution poses not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. And it is not clear that China can rein in its own economic juggernaut.

Other multimedia features:

• Expert Roundtable
  

  Throughout the week, a panel of scholars and environmentalists will take turns answering your questions on the political, social, scientific and economic challenges posed by the country’s rapid industrialization and equally sudden pollution crisis.

• Audio slide show: The World’s Smokestack
  

  Chang W. Lee, a Times photographer, traveled around China to document the impact of industrialization on the country’s rural and urban landscapes.

• Video: The Real Cost
  

  What is China’s real gross domestic product when the cost of pollution is subtracted? Recently the Chinese government tried to calculate a national “Green G.D.P.” and the new formula showed the soaring economy in a more sober light.

• Interactive graphic: Mapping the Impact
  

  See where pollution has most affected China’s landscape and how the country’s environment and economy compare with the rest of the world.

[tags]New York Times, China, pollution, news[/tags]

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